


Things Will Be Fine Again

by cheekaspbrak



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Blood and Gore, IT Chapter Two Fix-It, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, My anger towards that Quarry scene, Temporary Character Death, Time Loop, happy ending for ALL parties involved, if you catch my drift
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-11
Updated: 2020-03-18
Packaged: 2021-02-28 07:21:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22660024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cheekaspbrak/pseuds/cheekaspbrak
Summary: “Wanna hear my impression of your mother?”“Richie, I swear to fuck if you—”“Oh!Right there! Faster!”“Richard Michael Tozier! Quit making those noises!” His mother shouts just as Eddie nails him in the face with a pillow.ORRichie doesn’t know what to do with himself after Eddie’s death. Good thing he doesn’t have to figure it out, because he wakes up the next morning only to relive it all over again.
Relationships: Ben Hanscom/Beverly Marsh, Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 31
Kudos: 115





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> It feels good to write again.
> 
> The title is from So Little Time by Honeywater.
> 
> The songs I listened to while creating this chapter that I whole-heartedly encourage you to listen to while reading this chapter/writing angst of your own are: So Little Time by Honeywater, listen before i go by Billie Eilish, Poison Oak by Bright Eyes, Break My Heart Again by FINNEAS, Shadow Bloom by Florist.

“— and then the guy will say _‘Everybody make some noise for the one and only Richiieeeee Toooziiierrr!’—_ ”

“You should go by Richard. Richard sounds more adult.”

“Eddie, I want to be a fucking comedian. I don’t want to _sound_ adult.”

“Fine, fine. Sorry for interrupting. Continue with your act.”

“Well, I don’t really, uh, have an act yet.”

“You don’t have an act yet? What’s the point of forcing me to listen to all this then?” Eddie sighs and rests his cheek in his palm, looking at Richie expectantly. Richie is on his back, upside-down on the bed with his feet up near Eddie’s head. It’s the morning after a sleepover. Mrs. Kaspbrak is surely already on her way to pick Eddie up even though it’s not even eight in the morning yet. They were lucky that she’d allowed him to come over in the first place. It was their second sleepover— that Mrs. Kaspbrak knew about— since they’d first met.

“I dunno,” Richie twists his mouth in embarrassment. “Can’t a guy dream, Eds?”

“If you’re going to dream why don’t you dream about something _cool,_ like having super powers or something.” 

“Hey! Being a comedian might not be cool to _you_ but it’s cool to _me._ ” Richie pouts, a move that always gets Eddie to apologize. The trick is to use it very, very sparingly. Eddie is very easy to guilt-trip, as Richie has discovered.

Eddie eyes him up and down, trying to determine if Richie really is upset. “Sorry,” He frowns, “It _is_ cool, and I think you’d be a good comedian. You can do a lot of voices.”

“You think?” Richie’s eyes light up at the praise.

“Well, if you work on your voices some more, I think you’d be good. I still can’t tell the difference between your Irish and British accents.”

“Thas’ jus’ because you’ve nevah been outside of the East Coast, love!” Richie shouts, sitting up and pointing a playful finger at Eddie.

“See? I have no idea what that accent is supposed to be.” Eddie shrugs, going to pick up his comic book.

“Wanna hear my impression of your mother?”

“Richie, I swear to fuck if you—”

 _“Oh!_ Right there! Faster!”

“Richard Michael Tozier! Quit making those noises!” His mother shouts just as Eddie nails him in the face with a pillow.

-

For some inexplicable reason, this is the first memory he recalls when he sees Eddie standing in the restaurant, shifting from foot to foot and seemingly trying to recall his name. 

On the plane trip out to Derry, Richie had remembered Eddie. It was odd, because he hadn’t remembered him right away. He’d remembered Mike first, of course, and then Bill, and then Stan. Then he’d been on the plane, and he’d blinked, and he thought- _Wasn’t one of them named Eddie?_ and then he’d remembered red hair and cigarette smoke and forgot Eddie’s name again.

He saw Ben and Bev and couldn’t remember much else besides smoking cigarettes outside of class and the one time Ben had dared to join them and cried for an hour when they were caught and each received a detention.

He remembered Bill punching him in the face and figured he’d probably deserved it even though he couldn’t remember what he had said to make Bill hit him with that much ferocity. He remembered throwing rocks at Bowers for Mike and he flinched when he thought of the creative slurs those goons were able to come up with.

When he looks at Eddie, though, the first memory he recalls is some stupid sleepover where he made obscene sex noises about Mrs. K and Eddie hit him in the head with a pillow so hard he thought he smelled blood. More importantly, though, he remembers butterflies and he thinks— for about .003 seconds— why did I feel that way? And then he bangs the gong and he remembers _Oh my God I was in_ love _with him._

And then Eddie reminds the waiter that he is allergic to cashews and he thinks _Oh my God I am_ still _in love with him._

-

“Eddie would have hated this,” Ben says, with a fucking smile on his dumb-as-shit, handsome-as-shit face.

“Cleaning ourselves in dirty water?” Bill asks, and now everyone is smiling. Richie can’t see, he’s lost his glasses in the water somewhere, but he can see that they’re all smiling.

 _I’m a comedian,_ he thinks, _and even_ I _can’t find something to joke about right now._

How are they all smiling?

“Yeah,” Bev says, “He would’ve been telling us we were going to get Streptocockle-whatever.” 

Everyone laughs, but Richie has already begun to pull back, towards the gravelly shore.

“Streptococcus,” He says, and then hurls into the water. He does it while he’s still moving, which is gross and he faintly thinks that Eddie would have _really_ been yelling right now. He moves around the mess he’s made, which clings to his shirt as he passes, and he climbs up onto the small patch of shore.

“Richie?” Someone calls, and Richie vomits again into the patch of gravel. Everything goes blurry and he thinks he might be passing out— _which would be a kindness—_ but then he realizes he’s not passing out, he’s crying.

Jesus, that is so much worse.

“Richie, are you okay, man?” That’s Ben. Richie knows it’s Ben, and he wants to tell him to go fuck himself for joking about Eddie merely minutes ( _Hours? Days?)_ after he just died.

“Fuck you,” He says, because he wants to. Ben doesn’t stop, though. He is out of the water and in front of Richie, trying to pull him out of the defensive ball he’s curled himself into.

“I’m sorry,” Ben answers. Richie feels bad about saying that, now, because Ben Hanscom has always been and always will be the kindest person on this earth. 

Ben hugs him. Richie flops forward onto his shoulder, limp and far away. He imagines he must look a lot like Eddie did when Richie pulled him into a hug before they left his dead, mutilated body in the cave.

Richie hears someone sobbing. _Good,_ he thinks, _Finally someone else is upset besides me._ Then he realizes that it’s _him,_ that awful, grinding sound is emanating from his chest— choked sobs that he’s trying to swallow back down. 

“I’m sorry,” Someone says again, but this time it’s not Ben, it’s one of the others. They’re all touching him, now, holding onto his arms and petting at his hair. Richie can hardly see any of them without his glasses, but he figures it wouldn’t help even if he had them with how much he’s crying right now.

Everything is blurry shapes, but the water in front of him is blue, and he remembers that his bedspread was too; it was blue, with little colorful blocks on it that made it look like a game of Tetris, and he and Eddie would play imaginary Tetris on it— which was very fucking hard to do— before either of them had an Atari. He remembers Eddie wrapped up in that comforter at both their first and second sleepover, before he was old enough to be afraid of exposing his secret by sharing a bed with Eddie. He remembers Eddie wrapped up in it a few more times, after Pennywise, when he was too scared to fall asleep alone. He remembers him upside-down in Richie’s bed, feet sticking out of the comforter, snoring loudly _(“I do not fucking snore! You snore, asshole!”)._

He remembers it all. After 27 years.

And now he wants nothing more than to forget.

-

Richie has always puked when he’s nervous. He puked on Bowers shoes once, because he and Patrick had cornered him and Eddie behind the school when they were just about to head home. He puked when he got a C- in English— not because he didn’t understand the subject matter, but because he detested writing essays— and he knew his dad was going to be very upset when the report card came home. He puked when he broke his glasses for the third time and he just _knew_ his mom was going to yell and then cry— which was so much worse than the yelling.

And now, though there should be no fucking way he has anything left to puke up. In fact, there isn’t. But he’s still puking up straight, clear bile into the dingy yellow porcelain bowl in his hotel room.

Bill knocked on the door an hour ago to ask if he was okay (What, exactly, did he expect the answer to be?) and to tell him goodnight. Ben knocked to tell him that he’d like to go out to breakfast with everyone tomorrow morning before his flight and Richie just stifled cries in the heel of his palm until Ben said goodnight and left.

And then he knocked back some shots of bourbon from the bottle he had taken up to his room and managed to hold it down long enough for the alcohol to soak into his bloodstream before he puked some yellow-tinted bile into the yellow-tinted toilet. He sits there, now, slumped over and wanting nothing more than to disappear into the floor.

His head knocks against the edge of the toilet on his way down to the ground and it hurts but he can barely feel it over the effort it takes to block out the visions of Eddie spitting up blood and gasping in pain and staring at him blankly.

_Eddie._

His heart fucking throbs in his chest and the only pain he’s ever felt like this was the last day he remembered Eddie. It was two days into Freshman year of college and he’d thought _‘Fuck, I miss Eddie so much’_ and then he’d promptly never thought of him again until he was on that plane headed towards Derry. Even then, that pain was hardly a fraction of the low ache in his entire chest. It feels like his ribs are being torn apart and his organs are bursting and his fucking _brain_ can’t stop thinking—

 _what does it look like when a boulder collapses onto a dead body?_ Did _a boulder collapse onto Eddie? Was his body still intact? What did it look like right now?_

“Eddie,” He sobs, curled around nothing in his bed. He doesn’t even remember moving to the bed. Judging by how wet the sheet under his face is, he’d say it was a while ago. His head throbs from where he hit it against the toilet and his stomach rolls with nothing in it. He cries like he used to when Bowers got a particularly good punch or insult in and he had to go home with a bruised ego and body and pray that someday he wouldn’t have to be so scared anymore.

He wraps a hand around the sheets so tightly that his knuckles turn white and he drunkenly prays, to anything and everything that might be out there, to magic turtles and omniscient gods and demonic clowns, that when he leaves Derry he’ll forget it all. He prays that he will never have to see Eddie’s brown eyes, except for in dreams that he won’t remember when he wakes up. He prays he’ll never again hear him say _‘Richie’_ in a sad, pained whimper. He prays that maybe he’ll die in his sleep tonight and he prays that there’s some afterlife out there where he’ll be able to meet Eddie once more. 

He prays that every happy childhood memory, every brush of knuckles and girlish giggle and angry rambling will be forgotten, and that tomorrow morning he’ll wake up to the sound of announcer—

_‘Everybody make some noise for the one and only Richiieeeee Toooziiierrr!’_

Enter Richie Tozier. Stage Right. 

“So, my girlfriend caught me masturbating to her friend’s FaceBook page—”

-

He doesn’t wake up to an announcer the next morning. He doesn’t wake up at all, really. At least, he doesn’t remember waking up. He remembers the deep lull of a alcohol-fueled sleep and then _BAM!_

A surge of adrenaline as a tomahawk goes flying from his hands into the mullet-wearing skull in front of him.

“Guess you could say that was long overdue,” He hears himself saying, before he even knows his mouth is moving. “Get it, because we’re in a lib-”

He hurls off to the left of Mike just like he did before.

Before?

He’s done this before. He’s been here before. What’s happening? _What’s happening?_

A door behind him opens and he moves out of the way of Bowers’ body. Feet shuffle towards them and Beverly screams but Richie doesn’t even flinch because _What. The fuck. Is happening?_

Eddie stands there, looking mildly grossed out and a little green as he observes Henry Bowers dead body. There’s no gaping wound in his chest, only the one in his face, and he’s inhaling and exhaling like an _alive_ person would be, shuffling about awkwardly and looking Richie up and down like he can’t believe _Richie_ just killed a guy— and Richie can’t believe it either because he _already_ did kill him _yesterday._ Is this some sort of mental break? Is he hallucinating? What the fuck is going on?

“What the _fuck_?” He says, and everyone turns to look at him.

“What?” Beverly asks but Eddie is already answering for him.

“I think he’s still in shock,” He answers, like it’s so fucking _easy,_ like there’s no fucking hole in his chest and he’s not choking on blood. A flash of Eddie’s blood pouring over his hands, of Eddie bleeding out of his mouth while suspended above him and when he was younger— dripping all over his blue shirt in an evil demonic hallucination Pennywise had managed to cover up. Richie flinches, a sob gurgling in his throat that he manages to swallow down. Eddie watches him closely and Richie feels split open, completely on display for him the way he always felt when he was thirteen and awkward and gangly and completely incapable of keeping his mouth shut. Eddie always looked like he had X-Ray vision when he looked at Richie, like he didn’t need a game of Truth or Dare to find out all of Richie’s secrets, like he could just look at him and know him like the back of his hand in an instant.

Richie begins to laugh, hysterically. He doubles over and puts his hands on his head and _cackles._

“Sh- _Shock?_ Are you- Are you guys fucking _kidding?”_

No one says anything. Everyone exchanges weird looks.

“Where’s Bill?” Mike asks.

“He’s going to fight It alone,” Richie answers, breathless.

“Is that what he told you?”

“No. That’s what he tells _you_ when you call him in a few minutes.”

“Uh,” Eddie says, crossing the room and putting a steadying hand on Richie’s shoulder. _You’re alive,_ Richie wants to say. “Are you okay, buddy?”

Richie would vomit again if he hadn’t done so all last night and only a few minutes ago. How is this real? How is Eddie breathing?

“I’ve already been here,” He tells him, earnestly, because if anyone were to believe him right now it would be Eddie. He pictures Eddie, so young and gullible with a peach polo shirt and yellow shorts putting his hands on his hips and cocking a disbelieving eyebrow. 

“What does that mean?” Eddie asks, and _thank fuck,_ he’s taking him seriously.

“I— I lived this all already. I killed Bowers yesterday. I— _we_ went inside Neibolt. This… This _just_ happened— Eddie, man, what the fuck is happening?” His voice gets high-pitched and manic at the end of his sentence, but the point still comes across clearly. Everyone shares another look.

“Hey, calm down,” Eddie’s hand slides down his arm, stopping at his inner elbow, and he turns away to look at Mike.

“You’ve had a lot to drink, Richie,” Mike supplies, like it’s the only possible solution to Richie’s manic break.

Why the fuck is he friends with a bunch of idiots? Why is this happening to him? He doesn’t have the energy to explain this— What will get them to listen to him? 

“It doesn’t work, Mikey,” His voice goes low with anger, because he hasn’t had enough time to forgive Mike for putting them all in immediate danger, for putting _Eddie—_ “The ritual of fucking whatever doesn’t work. Because you _lied.”_

There’s a beat. Everyone stares at Richie while Mike goes quiet.

“What does that mean, Mike?” Ben says, low and careful.

“It _means_ that he scratched off the fourth side of the leather fucking cauldron thing. The tribe that originally did it _died_ .” Eddie pulls away from him to face Mike with rigid shoulders and Richie recognizes his stance instantly— usually accompanied by a finger in his face and high-pitched rambling about _diseases and statistics and Richie’s stupid fucking bravado._

“Is he right?” 

Mike opens his mouth and the gears are visibly turning in his head. “They just didn’t do it _right,_ guys.”

“I’m calling Bill,” Ben announces, turning away from the conversation and lifting his phone up to his ear.

“No, no! Listen, we just have to believe—”

“Oh my God,” Eddie starts, turning on his heel with a motionless hand caught in the middle of some half-gesture. He stops, half way through pacing, and looks Richie dead in the eye. “You’re not fucking with us?”

“What? No! Eddie, come on, man. You have to believe me—”

“What happens?” That catches Bev and Mike’s attention, who both seem to tentatively believe him now.

He can hear Ben on the phone with Bill, telling him that the ritual isn’t going to work. 

_‘Well, uh… Richie’s saying he’s, like, done it already? I don’t really know what that means.’_

Richie takes in a deep breath. “We go into the house, do the ritual. It comes after us. We get split up. I, uh, get caught in the deadlights. E-Eddie… Eddie gets me out.” He sees Eddie’s breath catch and he huffs a laugh. “He throws a spear-thing at Pennywise—”

“That works?” Eddie asks, hopped up on energy. Richie takes a minute to watch him breathe and blink and press his lips together impatiently when he doesn’t get an answer fast enough.

“No, it didn’t. It just made It angrier… and, uh…” 

Bev watches him struggle. He realizes, now, just how much he missed her ability to put all his thoughts into words. 

“Eddie dies, doesn’t he?” She says.

“Eddie dies?” Ben asks from behind her shoulder, still holding the phone up to his ear.

Richie can hear Bill over the phone— _“What? Eddie’s_ dead _?”_

“I die?” Eddie says, too. Richie thinks he might lose it if one more person says that.

“Yes,” He snaps, more bitter than he meant to sound. “You died because you apparently suck at being a risk analyst.”

“Fuck you,” Eddie says, far away from the conversation, eyes glassy and distant. Richie wants him to come back.

“Richie,” Bev scolds.

“If you’d just… turned around,” He laughs sadly.

“What happens after I die?” His eyes are back, now, zoned in on Richie.

Richie blinks and feels the same warm rush through his gut that he did whenever he got Eddie’s attention when they were kids. He’d crack jokes or flick him on the back of the head or push him into the Quarry just to get that all-consuming stare back on himself.

“We kill It by shouting insults at It— making It feel small. It was your idea, actually.”

“That’s all it takes?”

Richie nods. “That’s all it takes.”

Silence. Mike looks away guiltily.

“What do you do after?” Eddie presses further.

Richie swallows around bile. “We go to the Quarry.”

“Why?” Eddie scoffs.

Richie shrugs. “We were dirty.”

“Didn’t you have my… body… with you?”

Richie looks at the floor a little waise behind Eddie. “Nope.”

“No?”

Richie shrugs again. “The house was collapsing. We had to leave you.”

There’s silence. Ben’s not talking to Bill anymore. Richie squeezes his eyes shut in an attempt to push away the images his brain has conjured of rocks tumbling down onto Eddie’s corpse.

“Oh, hon—” Bev starts. Richie shakes his head rapidly.

“We go to the Quarry,” He begins in a rush, “We go back to the hotel and we sleep. When I woke up I was throwing the tomahawk at Bowers’ head.”

Glances are exchanged. Eddie stares. Richie struggles to breathe.

Ben licks his lips and points towards his cellphone. “This, uh, might be a bad time but— Bill’s still going there alone, right now.”

“Of fucking course he is,” Richie says.

Everyone starts moving but Eddie, who is back to the zoned-out, glassy-eyed look he had before. His lower lip does something a little funny, contorts into the pout he tried to hide in his shoulder when his mom dragged him away from Neibolt with a broken arm. Richie remembers how badly he wanted to do something to make him smile. He feels it now, too.

“You left me down there?” He asks. _Fuck,_ Richie wants to tear his heart out of his own chest.

“Yeah,” He says, because he can’t come up with an explanation. Eddie doesn’t want an explanation, anyway. They _knew_ he would’ve hated to have that horrible cave as his final resting place and they _still_ made Richie leave his body down there. “It won’t happen again, okay? You’re not going to pull any dumb shit this time. You’re just going to lay low and let the rest of us take care of it.”

Eddie doesn’t argue. He nods and his eyes don’t come back to Richie like they did last time.

-

They still get there in time to catch Bill before he goes into the house. He’s standing on the steps and he whirls around when he hears them come up.

“This is muh-my fault!” He shouts as they all scramble into the yard. “ I dragged yuh-you all into this. I started thu-this, let me finish it. If the ritual doesn’t work like Ben said, then let muh-me do this alone.”

Mike steps forward. “But Bill, Richie knows how this ends! He knows how to defeat It! We’re not letting you do this alone.”

Richie hasn’t left Eddie’s side since the library and part of him wants to tell everyone to turn around and leave right now. Another, stronger part of him wants to brutally murder that clown and keep Eddie alive all the while.

“You do?” Bill cocks his head at Richie.

Everyone looks at Richie. He stands there, eyes shifting from person to person. This was always Bill’s job- or maybe Mike’s. He’s not the leader, he’s the fucking clown. Well, not _the_ clown, but he’s just there to put a smile on everyone’s face. He plays his role well. He’s not supposed to be in charge of this shit.

Still, no one takes initiative, so he rolls his eyes and starts all over again. From Bowers to Bill’s speech to Spider-head Stan to the ritual to the deadlights to kebab Eddie to crushing that motherfuckers heart.

“—And then I woke up throwing the tomahawk back at Bowers head.”

“Juh-Jesus,” Bill rubs at his jaw. “All we have to do is… _bully him?”_

“Yeah. It’s like, a dream come true for me. Ever seen those celebrity Playground Insult interviews? I’d kill.”

“I don’t recall asking,” Eddie huffs, crossing arms over his chest. His eyes still aren’t on Richie.

-

Their flashlights flicker around the pitch-black house as Richie reminds them to stay together— because even though they’ve been in this house a total of three times no one ever seems to be able to remember that they can’t just wander off.

“What happens first, again?” Black lava oozes down the stairs, each of them points the weapons they’ve equipped themselves with at the sudden movement. This time, Eddie’s decided to hang onto the spear the whole time.

“Eddie, Bill, and I get separated from you guys in the kitchen. Stan’s body is in there— in the fridge. Let’s just, uh, skip that part. Follow me, we’ll go straight to the well.”

Surprisingly, sticking together works. They make their way all the way through the house without being separated, but once they’re in the water Richie forgets to keep an eye on Bev. 

The creepy bobble-headed old lady wraps around her and shouts, “Time to sink!” before plunging completely under the water.

None of them hesitate before diving into the water, themselves, except Eddie. He stays put and Richie really can’t blame him this time around.

They’re about to head down the hatch when Eddie pulls him aside, eyes bouncing all around, hands shaking and voice warbling.

“I can’t go down there, Richie. It’s a literal death wish for me to go down there right now.” He shoves his inhaler into his mouth and takes a deep inhale. It irks Richie that Eddie has turned into this— terrified, paranoid, and at times completely irrational. The Eddie that Richie remembers was a screaming, kicking, motherfucking badass who would channel all of his fear into a steady stream of rage. Richie was on the receiving end of that rage far too many times, but he never minded. 

It makes him wonder what has happened to Eddie during all these years apart that has turned him into this _shell_ of what he used to be.

He makes a note to pour them both a shot of whiskey tonight and talk about all their time apart.

“Listen, listen,” He says, trying to sound soothing. He latches onto Eddie’s wrists and hopes the gesture isn’t transparent. “Stay by my side, okay? Don’t do anything stupid. I _know_ what happens. As long as I don’t get stuck in the deadlights, you should be fine.”

Eddie’s eyes finally come back to him, blinking away panicked tears. “Okay, Rich.”

Pennywise, with no reason to stall and make a dramatic entrance, greets them almost as soon as they enter his lair. 

He still does his whole balloon sharade, because ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’. Richie lands next to Eddie when it explodes and sends them all flying, gripping onto the end of his shirt almost as soon as he hits the ground to make sure he doesn’t lose sight of him. The deadlights explode above them in rays of twilight blue.

“Get up, get up, come on,” Richie says, yanking Eddie up from the ground and pulling them both over to the others.

He rounds on Pennywise once they’re all together. “You’re nothing but a dumb fucking clown!” He screams, clasping a hand on Eddie’s shoulder. He fleetingly thinks that maybe he should’ve purchased one of those leashes that parents use on their toddlers. 

“A— A mimic!” Ben shouts, too, while everyone else hesitates. 

“A clown!” Mike screams.

“A bully!” Bev joins in, and Richie can hardly hear his own voice over the shouts of the others. Pennywise roars and stumbles about, head shifting into different images It’s conjured over the years.

This time, it’s not really his fault that he gets caught in the deadlights. He’s just trying to keep track of Eddie, to keep him safe, when the dipshit steps out in front of him. Richie goes to grab him, eyes flickering nervously between Eddie and the clown, when Pennywise senses vulnerability and opens his mouth wide and Richie’s vision briefly latches onto those dumb fucking lights and everything bursts into white light.

Last time he was in the deadlights, he remembered blackness and fear. That was all it was— fear, surrounding every moment, if there were moments at all. Time seemed to not exist within the deadlights, or rather, all of time seemed to exist within the deadlights. It was as though nothing and everything was all happening in one single moment, like every feeling Richie had felt in his entire life was being felt all at once. It was nothing and everything.

This time, though, his brain— if it exists at all, here, in this place— manages to conjure up one stupid, measly memory.

“— and then the guy will say _‘Everybody make some noise for the one and only Richiieeeee Toooziiierrr!’—_ ”

He’s saying the words, he’s in his thirteen-year-old body once again, but it’s almost like he’s a puppet. He moves, limbs swaying in dramatic, sweeping movements.

Eddie giggles. “You should go by Richard. Richard sounds more adult.”

“Eddie, I want to be a fucking comedian. I don’t want to _sound_ adult.” He feels himself speaking again, his body moving through the motions of the memory.

“Fine, fine. Sorry for interrupting. Continue with your act.”

Richie sits up on the bed, facing Eddie head-on. He’s staring expectantly, waiting for Richie’s response, small pout twisted to the side, button-nose and freckles so much clearer than they would be if this was just a memory. Richie wants to reach out and touch him and much to his surprise, spindly, pale hands that are no longer his own reach out to cup Eddie’s freckled cheeks. 

They’re soft and warm, exactly like they always were when Richie would pinch them and shout _‘Cute!’_ when they were younger.

Eddie stares at him, eyebrows furrowing and eyes growing wide with confusion.

“Rich?” He says, slowly, before it all disappears into one burst of light.

“Richie, come on man,” Now-Eddie says, patting the sides of his face while hovering over him.

“What happened?” Richie says, before white-hot blood races through his veins as he realizes that he’s been here before, and this is where the story ends. _‘Richie, man I think I did it! I think I killed it!’._

“Fuck,” He breathes, desperately wrapping his arms around Eddie’s torso, trying to quickly roll the two of them away from that perilous claw.

It doesn’t matter, he’s too late.

It’s different this time, just a little. Instead of going through Eddie’s back and out his stomach, the claw finds its mark below Eddie’s right armpit and pierces through to the left side. Different wound, same devastating result.

He feels Eddie’s torso jerk and he hears the painful half-scream that comes out of his mouth. Blood pours from both sides of the wound and begins to coat Richie’s arms which are still wrapped around Eddie’s back. He pulls back, surveying the damage done, there’s nothing to see but certain death.

“Richie,” Eddie says, blood pouring out of his mouth and down onto his and Richie’s arms.

“Eddie,” Richie says back because this can’t be happening, this can’t be real. He got a second chance and he went and fucked it all up. He lost Eddie and he’s losing him _again._ His arms go limp as Eddie is torn from his grasp.

“Too _bad,”_ Says Pennywise, shaking his claw as Eddie flails like a ragdoll. “I always thought he was a funny little hypochondriac. Much funnier than you, Richie.”

He tosses Eddie’s body to the side and Richie feels himself scream. The sound doesn’t reach his ears but it cuts up his throat until he’s certain it’s bleeding. He needs to _move,_ he needs to run over and wrap his jacket around Eddie’s wounds, if he can, but he’s completely frozen. 

“Eddie,” He says once more, chest heaving, tears falling from his eyes in desperation. 

He’s finally moving, up to his knees then his feet then he’s _running,_ sliding on his side and bruising up his skin before gripping Eddie’s shoulder and angling his body so he can see the damage. It’s bad, maybe worse than last time.

“I’m so sorry,” He sobs, because it’s worse this time around— he was _supposed_ to be able to stop it and he failed again. 

“Rich,” Eddie says, stopping Richie’s hands from wrapping the jacket around him. “It’s done. It’s okay.”

“No, no, no,” There’s noise— rocks tumbling, the other Losers shouting, fueled with rage to kill Pennywise with nothing but their words. He suffocates a sob in his throat, leaning forward to press his forehead against Eddie’s shoulder. He wants to be close, closer than he was last time. “Did you throw that stupid spike again?”

“C-Couldn’t—” Eddie spits out blood, “Didn’t know what would happen if we killed him while you were in the deadlights.”

“I told you not to pull any dumb shit, Eds,” He’s sobbing more openly than he was the first time around. It doesn’t matter.

Blood coats Richie’s hands entirely, thick and hot as he tries to apply pressure to the wounds. They’re right where he used to surprise attack Eddie with tickles when he had accidentally let it slip that he was ticklish. 

_(‘Richie! Stuh-huh-stop!’ He’d scream, shoving at part of Richie he could get at._

_Sometimes, when Richie wasn’t paying attention, Eddie would get revenge by tickling the sides of his stomach.)_

Eddie whimpers in pain and digs his nails into the ground.

“Don’t call me that,” He smiles and puts a hand over one of Richie’s. Richie observes how well their hands fit together, blood and all. By the time his eyes make it back up to Eddie’s, the life has already left them.

“Eddie,” He cries. He barely registers the others wrapping themselves around him, whispering goodbyes to Eddie. His throat is raw and torn, he can’t tell how loud his sobs are but the pain pulsates in his chest like the aftershocks of an earthquake. 

It’s Bill who says it first. “We have to go, Richie.”

The walls and ground shake around them. Eddie doesn’t blink or flinch. He’s really gone, _again._

“Then go, Bill.” He doesn’t take his eyes away from Eddie’s lifeless ones. He sees Eddie’s eyes distant with an emotion Richie is unable to recognize, he hears him say _“You left me down there?”_ so quietly, much too quiet for Eddie fucking Kaspbrak.

“Not without you,” Mike says, leaning forward to put a hand on his shoulder. Richie shakes it off angrily.

“I’m not fucking leaving. Go. _Now.”_

“Eddie wouldn’t want you to die, too,” Bev says gently, but her voice won’t work on him this time.

“I don’t care,” He seethes, whipping his head around to stare them all down. “I’ve already lived that life, and I’m telling you, there’s nothing out there for me once he’s gone.”

The ground rumbles. A large rock collapses down beside them. The others start to move, now, like animals preparing to flee an unsafe habitat. 

“Fucking go!” Looks are shared. Beverly begins to sob. He grabs her onto her shaking hand. “If you make me leave here, Bev, I’ll never be happy again. It’s okay, let me go.”

“We really have to go,” Ben says, surprisingly not looking at Bev, but at Richie, instead. It’s a goodbye.

“I know,” He answers, and there must be something different this time, because they all take a collective step back, and then they’re running. Richie hopes that they’ll make it.

He settles in beside Eddie, who is still warm. When he intertwines his fingers with Eddie’s, he realizes his skin is still just as soft as it was when they were young and he thinks it must be from the bubble wrap he had been wearing like armor since he was a child— a lot of good it did him in the end.

“I know you wouldn’t want me to stay,” He whispers, like he’s hiding it from someone, “But when have I ever listened to you, anyway?” 

His arm wraps around Eddie’s shoulders and then some, pulling his body flush against his own. He can see Eddie sitting on a park bench, irritated with their closeness but relenting to Richie’s smelly armpit being pressed against his shoulder, kicking his legs out in front of him as he eats off of the ice cream cone Richie had gotten for him across the street.

_(“I really shouldn’t let you eat any more ice cream,” He says, eyeing Richie’s half-finished cone. “When was the last time you even ate a vegetable?_

_Richie shrugs, moving his cone so it doesn’t drip on Eddie’s fanny pack. “Does pizza sauce count?”_

_“No! What the fuck? Of course pizza sauce doesn’t count!” Eddie all but shouts, eyebrows knitting together as he shoves Richie off of him.)_

The world will be worse off without Eddie Kaspbrak, that’s for damn sure.

The last thing Richie remembers is the permanent crease between Eddie’s eyebrows, etched in so deep it almost looks like those two little letters carved onto the kissing bridge. He presses the pad of his thumb to it, smoothing it out like a wrinkle in a shirt, and then everything goes black.

-

-

-

-

-

“Guess you could say that was long overdue,” He hears himself saying, before he even knows his mouth is moving. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I died getting you out of the deadlights?” He asks, eyes searching Richie’s face for something Richie doesn’t know how to give him.
> 
> “Um, yeah,” Richie answers slowly. Eddie taps his fingers against Richie’s chest— an odd feeling— once, then twice, then his hand drops away entirely.
> 
> “Then don’t get stuck in the deadlights, dipshit.” He offers the smallest of smiles, shrugging and rounding about to join the others.
> 
> Richie watches him go and lets himself laugh for a minute. If he closes his eyes, he can almost hear thirteen-year-old Eddie saying the same thing. He’s glad to learn that some things really never do change.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey everyone!
> 
> So, yeah. It’s been like fifty years since y’all got an update. You can reread the last chapter if you want but here’s the important stuff you need to remember:
> 
> 1.) Eddie has died in every cycle.
> 
> 2.) Richie has been able to relive memories in the deadlights.  
> And that is all <3
> 
> EDIT:  
> I almost forgot to tell you all what songs I listened to for this chapter! I listened to: Everything by MUNA, The Fear if Losing This by Florist, It’s Only Time by The Magnetic Fields, and This Is Home by Cavetown.

“Guess you could say that was long overdue,” He hears himself saying, before he even knows his mouth is moving.

-

-

-

-

-

“Motherfucking  _ fuck,”  _ He screams, because honestly, as fucked up as he is, even  _ he  _ doesn’t deserve whatever nightmare Groundhog Day bullshit this is.

Mike doesn’t even notice, probably because of the adrenaline and confusion from fighting Bowers. Beverly enters the library and screams. And Eddie—

Jesus fucking  _ Christ— Eddie. _

He’s alive, again, and Richie laughs hysterically because he’s been given a  _ third  _ chance. 

And then he stops. The laughter cuts short and everyone is looking at him, but he can’t bring himself to care because the wheels in his brain are turning. 

Is this some sort of fucking psychotic, hallucinatory torture setup from Pennywise? He’s watched Eddie die horrifically twice. He’s seen him skewered, bleeding, crying out in pain  _ twice.  _ He’s seen the life drain from his eyes and blood pour from his mouth and it was  _ Richie’s fault  _ both times.

“Is he okay?” Ben asks Mike, probably not trusting Richie is able to answer for himself.

“I think he’s in shock,” Eddie answers for him, again.

“I’m not in fucking shock!” He shouts, sounding  _ completely _ sane and put-together. “Okay, okay. Maybe I am but…”

“But, what?” Eddie blinks.

Richie stares at him, takes in every bit of information he can. He looks at the creases in his forehead, the bandage so carefully placed over his cheek, the ever-present ruffled frown on his face. 

“Listen, asshole. If you don’t start talking I’m checking you into a fucking hospital,” He spits, eyebrows raising up in a pointed look.

There’s a lot of things Pennywise is capable of replicating— but no, Richie doesn’t think he could ever mimic Eddie this perfectly. That’s probably why, during the entire time he’d spent torturing their group, he’d only ever taken the form of Eddie once, to spit out blood in some grotesque foreshadowing of whatever the fuck was happening right now. Eddie is a unique enigma— one that even Pennywise cannot figure out.

Everyone is staring at him right now, eyes darting between himself and Eddie. Richie, though, can’t move his eyes away from Eddie’s exasperated expression. He needs to make this right. He  _ needs  _ to keep Eddie alive this time and make sure Pennywise is killed dead. Something is giving him another chance and he isn’t going to question it— he’s going to  _ use  _ it.

“Okay. Listen up, fuckers—”

-

“Do you think the key to breaking this loop— or whatever— is keeping Eddie alive?” Bev asks, one hand firmly on Eddie’s shoulder. 

“I’ve only been through twice, Bev. But the only constant is that Eddie dies.” Bev’s face turns sour and pensive, staring at where her hand is placed on Eddie’s shoulder. It reminds Richie of how she’d look when she was wiping the blood off of his lip and putting a cold compress on his eye after he had a run-in with Bowers—  _ murderous. _

Richie feels it, too, because even if this Eddie doesn’t remember dying twice, Richie remembers the immense amount of pain he was put in. The gasping for air, the pained whimpers, the way he said his  _ fucking  _ name—

_ Nope. No, no. Don’t go there. Not right now. _

He starts to pace.

“We just need to keep Eddie alive, then,” Ben says, nodding along to the conversation. Mike still hasn’t seemed to fully commit to believing Richie yet.

“It’s not as easy as it sounds.” Richie turns to point at Eddie. “This  _ fucker  _ has the survival skills of a goddamn Koala bear—”

“What the fuck does that even  _ mean,  _ Richie?” Eddie snaps, just as shocked by the news of his death as he was last time. Richie deflates at the tone of his voice.

“It  _ means...”  _ He turns to face Eddie, clutching at his shoulders in a way that’s meant to be comforting but probably just comes off as hysterical. “It means that if anything- and I mean  _ anything-  _ happens to me, you will do  _ nothing  _ about it. Do you hear me?”

“What?” Eddie cocks his head.

“Just- Just listen to me, okay? You didn’t listen to me last time and that’s what got you killed.  _ Don’t  _ do anything stupid.” He stares at Eddie for a long time, watching his mouth contort into funny, pensive shapes until he finally nods in agreement. 

-

Bill is easier to convince, maybe because Bev believes Richie more than she did before. 

Eddie stays close to Richie’s side, which is much different from the times before. He hadn’t mentioned specifics of Eddie’s death, so it was likely the hidden  _ ‘We left your body to be crushed under boulders the first time around’  _ that was keeping Eddie from being so distant from him.

It’s Eddie dying that throws Bill off, and Richie wants to tell him to join the fucking club.

“How did we let Eddie die?” He asks, face young all over again and displaying a fresh wound of guilt from Georgie’s death. Being a leader always goes hand in hand with carrying the guilty burden of every wrong move on heavy shoulders.

“It was my fault,” Richie answers quickly, shoving his hands into his jacket and pulling it close to himself.  _ Steady breaths, Tozier. _ Everyone is looking at him. “I got stuck in the deadlights both times. Fucknuts over here had to go and play the hero.” 

Eyes blink. Chests rise and fall. Richie itches for a drink. “Well, if that’s all, let’s go,” He huffs, moving to step forward.

Eddie stops him, putting a hand on his chest and looking up at him with those same faraway eyes as before.

“I died getting you out of the deadlights?” He asks, eyes searching Richie’s face for something Richie doesn’t know how to give him.

“Um, yeah,” Richie answers slowly. Eddie taps his fingers against Richie’s chest— an odd feeling— once, then twice, then his hand drops away entirely.

“Then don’t get stuck in the deadlights, dipshit.” He offers the smallest of smiles, shrugging and rounding about to join the others.

Richie watches him go and lets himself laugh for a minute. If he closes his eyes, he can almost hear thirteen-year-old Eddie saying the same thing. He’s glad to learn that some things really never do change.

-

They get down to the lair in no time, moving fast and ignoring all distractions. Richie is so nervous that he has a constant tremor in his hands as well as his words but, by God he tries to put on a brave face for everyone else. Is this what Bill feels like all the time?

The clown rises up out of the room's eerie center, cackling and gibbering all the while. His arms form readily into spider-like legs with sharp talons.

“Shut up, you fucking bully!” Richie shouts, eager to get everyone else to join in, too.

“You’re nothing but a stupid clown!” Eddie screams viciously, but It does nothing but smile. Richie blinks up at It, why isn’t this working?

“A mimic!” Ben says

A claw lands in between Richie and Eddie and the rest of the group. He doesn’t bother hesitating when he grabs onto Eddie’s elbow.

“No, no, no,  _ Richie.  _ Don’t touch the other boys.” Pennywise tuts and Richie takes several steps back. Eddie follows like he’s his shadow. “Wouldn’t want them knowing your little secret, would we,  _ Chee?” _

“What the fuck does that even mean?” Eddie snarls, determined to protect Richie without even knowing what he’s protecting him from. Jesus Christ, Richie loves him so goddamn much. 

Pennywise leaves no time to dwell on it before slamming another claw on the ground in front of them. They scramble away from the razor-sharp dagger.

“What would Eddie think of you if he knew, huh? If he knew your dirty, nasty—”

“Shut the fuck up, asshole!” Bev bellows, a rock flying from the same place her voice comes from. It hits the shoulder of the spidery monster in front of them and it’s clear he does  _ not  _ like to be taunted.

“That isn’t very nice, Bevvy,” Pennywise says, the voice of Bev’s dad echoing throughout the cave. “I worry about you, Bev. I worry a lot.”

“We’ve got to get back over there,” Eddie whispers, low and right next to Richie’s ear. “We won’t survive if we get separated.”

Richie nods and watches Eddie twist his wedding ring around his finger— once, twice, before he starts in the direction of the commotion. But—

Bill screams from across the lair, loud and piercing. It’s a wailing noise, and Richie can’t see well enough to figure out if he’s the one who’s hurt or if it’s someone else. 

“Bill!” He and Eddie scream at the same time. Richie’s chest closes up, like a weight is sitting on it. It feels like the world has turned on it’s side as Eddie takes off in the direction of the wailing.

By the time they get there, Bill is silent and glassy-eyed and lifeless.

Richie isn’t even aware of what he’s saying. His ears ring like they did when the balloon popped and the ground hurts when his knees hit it. This wasn’t supposed to happen. 

“Bill,” Eddie says, though it sounds less like a call and more like a mourning cry. 

“What will you do without your big,  _ strong  _ leader?” The clown taunts, a sneer hidden with a giggle catching Richie’s attention.

“Fuck you!” He screams, voice raw and hoarse and empty. He can’t even find it in himself to feel anger. He just wants to take a gun to his head but he fears that he’ll only wake up to Bowers’ bloody skull once more.

Eddie, on the other hand, is riled up more than Richie has ever seen— which is saying a  _ lot.  _ Richie has seen him at his worst— or, at least, what he assumes is his worst. How much do you really know about a person when you haven’t seen them since high school?

_ (“Eddie. Eds, I’m fine—” _

_ “Like fuck you’re fine! Your nose is broken! I swear to God, the next time I see him I’m going to rip his nose off of his face like a goddamn chimpanzee—” _

_ Richie squawks, batting at Eddie’s hands which are making choking motions midair. “I’m  _ fine,  _ Eddie! Jesus, the last thing I need is for you to get hurt, too!” _

_ Eddie maintains his glower, but his face softens. He settles for getting revenge on Bowers by just flipping him off behind his back.) _

“You dumb fucking clown!” Eddie screeches, pushing Richie to the side and taking one gut-wrenching step in front of him.

“Eddie, stop—” He pleads, shaking like a leaf, but it’s too late. A claw slices into Eddie’s gut, swift and sure. Pennywise doesn’t even bother shaking him around, instead opting to rip clean through Eddie’s left side. Intestines fall to the ground and Richie has never seen anything like it. Half like raw sausage links, half like ground beef. He can’t take his eyes off of it all until Eddie makes a grunt, or perhaps it’s more like a howl, as he grabs at his missing side. 

It feels like Richie’s eyes begin to bleed when he looks at Eddie’s face and sees just how much pain he is in.

Eddie has always been expressive, and in death that is no different. His eyebrows draw together and for half a second he looks so small, so young with no wrinkles and a cast on his arm and fire in his heart. 

Blood pours from his mouth, tongue glistening with it. His lips smack together, trying to speak, making a wet popping noise before he drops to the ground, no time left for last words.

Richie’s never swallowed glass but he’s sure he knows exactly what it feels like when he asks “What’s happening?” With his eyes glued to Eddie’s dead body. It feels like he’s in the deadlights once more, body numb and mind paralyzed. 

There’s arguing, or something, going on between the other losers. They might be talking to him, he’s not quite sure.

“I think he’s in shock,” Mike says. Richie whimpers, tears beginning to fall rapidly. Mike grabs him by the shoulder and pulls him off to the side, and in a daze Richie realizes that he’s propping him up in the same place they’d put Eddie the first time around.

“Stay here,” Mike whispers, pressing a solid hand to his chest for two, three seconds before pulling back and disappearing altogether.

_ Bill’s dead. Eddie’s dead. Bill’s dead. Eddie’s dead. Bill’s dead. Eddie’s dead. Bill’s de— _

“Come on, Rich. We have to go.” Mike pulls on Richie’s sleeve.

_ Fuck. Stan’s dead, too.  _

“I think I could carry him,” Says Ben, looping an arm underneath Richie’s shoulder. He doesn’t have to lift him up bridal style, though, he simply supports his weight with his arm.

_ Bill’s dead. Eddie’s dead. Stan’s dead. Bill’s dead. Eddie’s dead. Stan’s dead. _

“They wouldn’t want you to die, too,” Bev whispers, close to his ear. “Come on, you’ve gotta stay strong.”

_ I can’t, Bev. I’m not fucking strong. I wish I was, but I’m not. _

He doesn’t know when or how, but they get him back to his hotel room in one piece. They even manage to push him under the covers, like they expect him to sleep somehow.

_ Bill’s dead. Eddie’s dead. Stan’s dead. _

And his brain continues the chant on through the night.

-

The thing is, Richie isn’t surprised when he wakes up to Bowers’ skull being split in half. 

But, Jesus fucking Christ, he’s never been happier to see the blood ooze down the back of that gnarly mullet because it means that at least ⅔ of the people he’s lost are alive again.

_ Not Stan, though. _

Before he even opens up his mouth to say anything, though, he already knows that it’s not going to work out in their favor this time, either.

-

It doesn’t.

It  _ so  _ fucking doesn’t.

Eddie suffers a nasty wound— a missing left arm. It’s ripped off by Pennywise like it’s nothing, leaving an ugly stump, blood and bone and a few shreds of torn muscle.

Richie presses his jacket against it, though he knows it won’t work, and he sits down on the cave floor and pulls Eddie’s back against his chest and cries into the shoulder that isn’t mostly blood and gore.

“Rich?” Eddie says, voice still strong and reverberating through Richie’s ribs. He’s not gone, yet.

“Yeah, buddy?” Richie lifts his forehead off of his shoulder and lets Eddie’s head loll onto his own.

“How many times have I died?” He’s trying to look at Richie but he doesn’t have the strength to move his head. Richie doesn’t help, doesn’t think he could deal with looking into Eddie’s eyes.

“Um,” He swallows around the glass in his throat. “This is the fourth time, I think.”  _ Liar.  _ He  _ knows  _ this is the fourth time. He can’t get every sorrowful last glance out of his fucking head, every last word.

Ben and Bill are screaming at It, dodging spidery claws and some sort of fire-breath Pennywise has taken to spewing. Their playground insults aren’t working very well. Richie wonders if it’s because he feels so hopeless and scared. It’s probably his cowardice that’s losing this battle, but he can’t bring himself to give a fuck because Eddie is dying and he knows he will wake up in the morning to the same day all over again.

“Were they all because I was—” He sucks in a shuddering breath, a wheeze of pain, “Because I was protecting you?”

Richie mulls over the question, realizing that yes, all of them, even this one was because Eddie was trying to protect him.

“I’ll take the silence as a yes.” Eddie laughs and Richie leans in to listen to it. “The thing is, Rich, I don’t think you’re going to stop me from trying to protect you… or any of the others. You’re just going to have to make sure that no one else does anything stupid.”

Richie blinks, slow and thoughtful. He looks over to his friends screaming mean things at the Eater of Worlds and prays that maybe Eddie’s right. Maybe next time they’ll figure out how to keep Eddie alive and break this fucking curse.

The clown roars, laughs and swipes a claw at Beverly. Richie squeezes his eyes shut tight and feels Eddie’s back press against his chest in his last breath.

“I’ll get it right one of these times, Eds. I promise.”

-

He follows Eddie’s own advice and tells him to sit down on the curb right in front of Neibolt house and not move an inch. Eddie bickers with him for a good ten minutes before relenting and popping a squat on the  _ “nasty fucking”  _ sidewalk. 

That plan works for about three seconds.

A large, gloved hand slides out through the front door when Bill opens it and snaps Eddie’s neck like a fucking glow stick.

-

Richie tries to leave him at the library. This time around, it takes about twenty minutes to convince him to stay.

It  _ works.  _ It  _ fucking  _ works.

Until it doesn’t, when they show up to a library burnt to the ground and Richie can still smell smoke in his nostrils when he wakes up the next time.

-

He takes Eddie with them instead, and doesn’t say a word about the cycle to anyone. Instead, he lives it all like it’s the first time around and plays the part as well as he can recall— says his lines, pretends to be surprised at Stan’s head rolling out of the fridge, and picks the Not Scary At All door on the first try.

The only thing he can’t bring himself to do is look up into the deadlights, so instead of pulling him into pitch-black nothingness Pennywise just spears him through the gut and tosses him aside like trash.

It’s a change of scene, at least. Maybe he’ll get to die before Eddie does, this time.

“Rich. Oh my God, Richie. Stay with me. You’ve gotta stay with me, man—” Eddie panics when Richie’s eyes slip closed and Richie wishes he could keep them open just so he doesn’t have to hear the wheeze in Eddie’s breath but he’s losing blood too fast and he just wants to  _ sleep.  _

“I’m sorry, Eddie,” He says, instead, though it’s slurred and nearly nonsensical.

“You don’t—” Eddie chokes on words, “You don’t have to be sorry for anything, you stupid fucking moron.  _ Fuck.” _

“I am though.” He flounders for Eddie’s hand, which is willingly given to him. “Sorry you’ve gotta see this. I know how much it hurts.”

“You— What?” Calloused fingers stroke over his own and it feels so nice. “What the fuck does that mean, Rich? Jesus. Just— Just keep your eyes open, okay?”

They weren’t open to begin with, but Richie nods anyway.

“I’m not going anywhere.” Eddie squeezes his hand, and Richie thinks he squeezes back, but he can’t feel anything other than the pain.

“I know,” He answers, then uses every ounce of strength he has left to pull the back of Eddie’s wedding-ringed hand up to his lips for a kiss. Eddie wheezes once more, but he’s not dying and somewhere deep in his heart he hopes that means that maybe this will be the last cycle of the loop. “I love you,” He tells him, better late than never.

“I love you, too,” Eddie answers easily.

“No, I mean…” Richie starts—

-

“Guess you could say that was long overdue,” He hears himself saying, before he even knows his mouth is moving.

-

He loses count eventually, but he never forgets how Eddie dies. 

Sometimes it’s the claw, other times they don’t make it out of the crumbling Neibolt house in time (something that has caused him to have the sounds of Beverly’s piercing screams stuck in his head forever). Sometimes it’s a fall down the stairs, or maybe he drowns while Beverly’s freaky fucking grandma-lady holds him under the water. One particularly fucked up time he tumbles through the same spot in the Neibolt second floor that he did when he was young, and instead of a broken arm it’s his fucking neck. 

He thinks the cycle is nearing its 90th time, at the least, when he gets stuck in the Deadlights for the third time throughout this entire trip.

He’s narrowly avoided it a few times, because it’s truly unnerving and not exactly something he wants to experience again. But it’s kind of like when you own a new piece of white, expensive furniture. At first, you won’t eat or even sit on it, but after owning it for a year or two, you could spill red wine on it and not give a fuck.

He gets careless and pays for it with a mind-numbing, unearthly, out-of-body experience. Nothing and everything. Dark and light. Every moment of time existing together in one spot.

It’s Eddie’s fault, in a way. Eddie gets lifted up into the air by It and plummets to the ground with a bone-cracking noise that is definitely fatal. Richie, still, though it’s the upteenth time this has happened, rushes to check his injuries. He holds his hand through his last breath, kisses his forehead when he’s gone, and looks up to flip Pennywise off before everything goes still.

There’s white, and there’s warmth, and there’s the sound of a familiar buzzing. Richie hears it before he sees it—

“She gave me three points off for using the wrong punctuation, can you believe it? It was a fucking semicolon! She probably doesn’t even know how to  _ use  _ a semicolon. Trust me, I read the entire textbook, cover to cover, and I used that semicolon corr— Jesus Christ, Rich, how many times do I have to tell you to stop using the handrails on the stairs? Hundreds of people touch those everyday and god  _ knows  _ what’s on their hands. If they wash their hands as often as you do they’re probably spreading the Black Plague around.” 

They’re outside the high school, walking down the small set of stairs to the parking lot so Richie can drive Eddie home after school. Eddie’s wearing a yellow sweater with a tiny little raven embroidered on the left side and a pair of green shorts. Richie knows the outfit well because he’d worn it on Richie’s seventeenth birthday and it had been the best present he’d received the entire day.

“Eddie?” He asks with a voice he hasn’t heard in thirty-odd years.

Eddie stops his motion and turns to look at Richie funny, probably because his voice was trembling when he’d said his name. “Are you okay, Chee?”

Richie moves his hands carefully, amazed that he can even control what he’s doing in this  _ memory,  _ and wraps the spindly fingers around Eddie’s wrist. “Richie?” Eddie asks again, turning to face him fully.

His face pulls into a concerned frown and he clasps a hand on Richie’s shoulder and it only takes two beats before tears are leaking onto Richie’s cheeks.

“Richie? Richie, what’s wrong?”

“I don’t think I can see you die again.” He’s so lost, in so much pain and wants to live in this moment for the rest of his life. He wants to pull Eddie close and hold him to his chest, breathe in his smell and cry into his hair. “I’m not cut out for this, Eds. I— I said Stan was weak but  _ fuck,  _ Eds, I’m so goddamn weak. Why is this happening to me? Why not Bill or— or,  _ God,  _ you? You’re so brave and strong and—”

“Richie, what in the fuck are you talking about?” Eddie asks, nimble fingers squeezing roughly on Richie’s shoulder, and then he’s gone.

-

“Guess you could say that was long overdue.”

The others enter, Bev screams, Richie rounds on his heel and grabs onto Eddie’s elbow. 

“What?” Eddie asks, gripping onto Richie’s forearm in return. 

“We need to talk.”

“Richie, where are you going?” Ben aks. Richie is so fucking sick of talking.

“We’ll be back in a minute,” He lies through his teeth.

Fresh air greets them, birds chirping as though the world isn’t ending. He wonders if any of them are reliving their own personal hell over and over again.

“What’s wrong?” The crease of Eddie’s eye lays low, confused and anxious. He chews on his lip the same way he always did before.

_ (“That’s a nasty habit, Eddiebear. You have to stop that!” Mrs. K had cried, pulling at the taut skin between Eddie’s teeth as he and Richie headed out for an excursion to the Quarry. Richie rocked on his heels on the front porch as the door closed behind him. _

_ “I’ll show you a nasty habit, Eddiebear,” He teased anxiously, sensing Eddie’s bad mood from a mile away. _

_ “You’re fucking insufferable,” He responded, but there was still a smile tugging at his lips, and that was all Richie could ever ask for.) _

“I’m leaving. Come with me.”

Eddie scoffs, looking back towards the library. “Where are you going to go?”

“Anywhere,” Richie hopes his face doesn’t look as desperate as he feels. “Come with me.”

It’s a long shot, he knows. It’s a long shot that Eddie will come with him and it’s a long shot that he won’t wake up in the morning to the same old shit.

“Anywhere?” Eddie pauses. “We’re in Derry. The closest town is like forty-five minutes away.”

“Okay,” Richie sighs, “So we’ll go there.”

“To Kennebunkport?” Eddie snorts but his face loses its smirk when Richie nods. “You’re serious?”

“Come on, Eds. You were gonna leave with me before, at the… Chinese restaurant.” God, that was so long ago. “And at the Townhouse.”

Eddie looks to the ground, rolls his shoulders. “They’re still going to go.”

Richie huffs a breath. “Yeah, they do every time.”

“What?”

“I’ve lived through this all before— And before you start asking a million questions, just  _ listen  _ to me. Nothing  _ ever  _ works. It goes wrong every time. You  _ die  _ every time. I wake up the next day every single time, throwing a tomahawk at Bowers’ fucking head.”

His eyes squint at Richie. “Is this a—”

“Jesus fucking Christ,  _ why  _ do you have to ask that  _ every  _ time? No. This isn’t a joke.” Richie taps his toes nervously on the ground as Eddie tries to figure out what he thinks of the situation.

“Listen, you can stand here all fucking day, but I’m leaving, okay? I’m not watching this all go to shit  _ again.” _

He pulls out his keys and moves to step away, but Eddie grabs at his sleeve. “I die every time? How— How many times has it been?”

Richie shrugs, rubbing the pad of his thumb over the raised lock button on the key. “At least seventy. Maybe more, I’m not really sure. It’s not exactly something I want to keep track of.”

There’s five solid seconds where Eddie stares wistfully at the library. “You promise that— that if they die, everything will reset tomorrow?”

Pain gathers behind Richie’s eyes and he lets out a humorless laugh. “I fucking promise. I’ve tried everything. They won’t remember a damn thing when this all resets.”

“Well then,” Eddie shifts between his two feet before one steps forward, “Take me to Kennebunkport.”

And so Richie does.

-

There’s a shitty restaurant just outside of Kennebunkport called  _ Mama Bear’s Grill  _ that Richie remembers visiting on a road trip or field trip at one time. 

“How do I die?” Eddie asks once they’re sitting down at a table inside the dark, cabin-themed restaurant, like it’s so fucking easy to talk about your inevitable death in a matter-of-fact way.

“Can we please not do this?” Richie slides his fingers down the menu, pretending to be more invested in what to eat than this conversation. As he looks at the food, his stomach growls and he realizes that this would be the first time he’s eaten in this time loop.

“Well, maybe it was preventable. Maybe we could—”

“God, it’s like a broken record. Do you know how many times we’ve had this conversation? At least forty-five, probably more. There’s  _ nothing.  _ Absolutely fucking  _ nothing.  _ I throw a tomahawk at Bowers, rally the troops, dive headfirst into Neibolt, and watch you take your last breath. I  _ don’t  _ want to talk about it because I’ve been living this hell for about three fucking months. I want to sit here, make small talk about your wife, and eat a goddamn meal.” He’s white-knuckling the menu, tears threatening to spill over and make his voice crack, but Eddie has never known when to stop pushing.

“So, what? You’re just going to keep living like this for all of eternity? You’re not going to even  _ try  _ to figure out why?” He purses his lips sternly, and Richie notices with some odd kind of elation that they’re not even trembling. Eddie might shake like a leaf at the mention of his mother but he can go head to head with Richie without backing down. Pride strangely swells in his chest.

“No, Eds. I’ve tried. You’re not the only one who has died. I’ve been speared through the gut and crushed by a boulder and I— I just want it to stop. Just for one night, okay?” 

Eddie stares at him, expression morphing from stubborn to something different, something softer. “My wife’s name is Myra,” He says quietly, and even though Richie wasn’t really  _ serious  _ when he said he wanted to make small talk about his wife, he smiles nonetheless.

-

Dinner is quick and painless and almost  _ fun.  _ It’s the most fun Richie’s had since this all started, at least. Maybe the most fun he’s had since high school, but he doesn’t want to think about that, because that’s just pitiful.

He pays the bill for them because that money will be back in his account tomorrow, otherwise maybe he’d have made Eddie pay for half and then maybe bartered to get him to pay for it all while telling him what a gentleman he is.

They ditch the car at the restaurant, opting to walk down the streets of East Kennebunkport in the dark. It’s getting late, so there are only a few cars on the road. The quiet of crickets chirping and the sound the brushing of Richie’s leather jacket and Eddie’s cardigan make against one another could lull him into a slumber. 

“Tell me what college-aged Richie Tozier was like. I’ve always wondered,” Eddie says, stuffing his hands in his pockets. There’s something about the  _ ‘always’  _ that gets Richie’s heart thumping.

“College-aged Tozier? Well, he was a lonely fucking asshole.” Richie shrugs, looks up and down the street at all the houses he can clearly remember from his childhood. “I was one of those kids that loses all motivation without his parents around to keep him on his toes. I stopped going to classes and dropped out by the second semester of Sophomore year.”

Eddie almost looks surprised. “Seriously?” He cocks his head, just like the Pomeranian they saw behind the  _ Not Scary  _ door. “You always had straight A’s. Like, you didn’t even try and you still got straight A’s.”

Richie chuckles to himself. He remembers all the afternoons spent listening to Eddie shout expletives at Richie for being such a shitty tutor— despite being one of the smartest kids in their class.

_ (“If I fail this Algebra test it’s all your fault! You’re the worst teacher I’ve ever met!” _

_ “Having a big ol’ brain is an unteachable skill, Eds. Sorry, my man.” _

_ “You’re an asshole.”) _

“I’m not saying I didn’t get good grades, I just didn’t want to show up to classes.” Richie stares at his feet. “What about college-aged Eddie, huh? Is that where you met the old ball and chain?”

Eddie scoffs but doesn’t argue with the sentiment. “No, no. I met Myra a few years after. In college, though, I was a lot more popular than I was in Derry.” Both him and Richie share a sarcastic little laugh. “I was, uh, pretty good at track, so.”

“Fuck yeah, I bet you were!” Richie smiles and uses his elbow to nudge at Eddie’s side. “You could outrun any one of us Losers! When Bowers showed up you’d leave me in the dust to deal with him.”

Eddie snorts loudly and rolls his eyes. “Oh, shut up. I always came back to check if you were okay.” 

“Mhm. Doctor K always came back to patch me up.” Richie throws an arm around Eddie’s shoulders and gets a funny look from him in return. Richie tosses one right back at him. Eddie laughs to himself.

“What about you, man? Why didn’t you ever get married?” Eddie’s hand suddenly presses to the small of Richie’s back and he chokes on air.

“Ah, well. I just never found anyone to settle down with,” He shrugs, looks up at the night sky that hasn’t changed in months. “Actually, uh—” His lungs shake as he fills them up with one long breath, “I think I’m gay, so, there’s that.”

Eddie, thankfully, doesn’t stop or even falter for a moment. He just chuckles. “It took you forty years to figure that out. Jesus, Tozier, you really haven’t changed at all.”

“Fuck you, dude! Most people get a hug or a pat on the back when they come out,” Eddie makes a big show, then, of reaching up between his shoulder blades and smacking him hard on the spine. “You’re a dick,” Richie says truthfully.

Eddie throws his head back and laughs in a way that makes Richie feel choked up all over again. Had he known it was this easy, maybe he’d have come out in high school. Maybe he wouldn’t have ended up a forty-year-old closet case. 

They both grow quiet, existing in comfortable silence. Richie hasn’t been comfortable with silence in years.

“Hey, uh, I wanted to ask you something,” Eddie says suddenly. 

“Okay, go ahead.”

“Promise not to be an asshole about it?” Eddie looks pre-disgruntled for whatever Richie’s about to be an asshole about. He still promises he won’t be. 

“Well,” Eddie starts, twisting his mouth up in an uncomfortable sort of grimace. “Do you remember our second sleepover? Right before my mom was coming to pick me up?” 

Richie’s entire face lights up with a smile—

_ (“— and then the guy will say ‘Everybody make some noise for the one and only Richiieeeee Toooziiierrr!’—”) _

“Yeah, I remember,” He tries to tone down the grin, but it just won’t go away.

“Well,” Eddie says again, staring at the ground. “Right before she showed up, I remember you put your hands on my cheeks, and uh, it was weird… but— Well, I always thought you— What… Wh-Why did you do that?”

Richie’s step stutters momentarily. He put his hands on Eddie’s cheeks? He didn’t remember—

And then he sees it, in the deadlights, thirteen-year-old hands reaching forward to cup Eddie’s face.

“You remember that?” He asks, sounding way too aggressive. 

Eddie turns red. “Yeah, I mean— It was just one of the smaller memories that came back when Mike called. It’s, uh, stupid. I just wondered…” He trails off.

They come to an intersection. Richie leans against the pole momentarily so he can watch Eddie’s back as he enters the crosswalk.

“Aw, Kaspbrak. You’re stuttering like a kid with a crush,” Richie teases, all while thinking  _ ‘If only he knew’.  _ He turns red. “Sorry, I probably shouldn’t—”

Eddie doesn’t let him finish. He turns around, sticks his tongue out, and flips Richie off with both hands.

And then something a little odd happens.

Richie doesn’t even see it happen; he blinks on instinct when he feels the sharp burst of air and hears the loud screaming of tires.

One moment Eddie’s there, and then the next—

He’s at least twenty feet away, laying on his side, limp and nearly unrecognizable.

Richie’s seen a lot of movies that depict car crashes in a number of ways, but now, he can safely say that none of them ever get it right. None of them ever get the amount of blood right, the cracking of a skull, the collarbones and radius bones sticking out of gaping holes, the instantaneous bruising that litters every piece of revealed skin. None of them have ever correctly portrayed what it feels like to see one, either. 

Richie can’t fucking breathe, can’t fucking think, but he’s moving across the road into the middle of the intersection. Someone is screaming, maybe a witness, maybe himself, he’s not sure. He’s almost to Eddie, almost able to touch him and hold him again, when he hears someone shout  _ ‘WATCH OUT!’ _ and he realizes that the light on the other side of the street is still green and he’s now standing in the middle of a particularly busy intersection and—

Everything goes black.

**Author's Note:**

> Talk with me on tumblr @cheekaspbrak (even though I’m never on there as of late).  
> Please, please comment if you want to see more. It is _so_ motivating to hear that you loved it.


End file.
